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PPPs for Government Services ICP 2004 General government The general government sector in the SNA consists of : central government, regional or state government units, local government units, social security units, NPIs controlled and mainly financed by government units.

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The main economic functions of government units are either to produce goods and services that they then provide directly to individuals or the community, or alternatively to finance the provision of goods to households or the community that are produced by non-government units.

Traditionally, therefore, governments have been major producers of goods, especially in the former socialist centrally planned economies.

The tendency now in most countries is for countries to contract out production to commercial producers where feasible, even though they may continue to pay for it.

Individual services are provided to individual households: e.g., education, health, transport or housing service provided to individual household members or the household as a whole.

Collective services provided simultaneously to the community as whole or sections of the community (large groups of households): e.g., maintaining public order and defence, street lighting and sanitation.

Government current expenditures consist of current expenditures on consumption goods and services plus the payment of current social transfers such as sickness and unemployment benefits, pensions and so on.

Households’ actual consumption consists of their own expenditures on consumption goods and services plus the value of the individual consumption goods and services that are provided to them free or at reduced prices by government units. The latter are called social transfers in kind. This is the concept of household consumption used in the ICP.

Government’s actual consumption consists of their current expenditures on consumption goods and services less the value of the social transfers in kind that they provide to households.

Market producers are producers that sell their output at prices designed to cover most or all of their costs. Usually they plan to make at least some net operating surplus or profit. They do not plan to continue to operate indefinitely at a loss.

Non-market producers sell to households at prices that are deliberately meant not to cover their costs. They plan to operate at a loss. They may sell at zero prices: i.e., provide their outputs to households free.

Non-market producers are owned by governments of NPIs. The losses they deliberately incur are financed by the government or the NPI out of funds raised in other ways, such as taxation or donations.

Non-market producers are owned and operated by governments or NPIs and typically produce services of one kind or another.

In practice, collective services have to be produced by non-market producers because they are what economists call public goods where there is market failure.

In addition, most governments choose to engage in the non-market production of at least some individual services such as health, education, transportation and housing, even though it would be possible to charge market prices for them, if desired.

Conceptually, the PPPs for the 7 basic headings referring to market transactions do not pose any special problems.

In practice, no additional price collection is undertaken as the PPPs can be estimated from the prices already collected for household’ purchases.

To simplify matters, basic heading PPPs already calculated are used as proxies for the PPPs for government purchases from market producers, such PPPs being described as ‘reference’ PPPs in the draft chapter. The reference PPPs are listed in Table 3 of the chapter.

The prices charged by non-market producers, which may be zero, do not reflect their utility to their consumers. They may also be quite different from the market prices of exactly the same individual goods and services when they are produced by market producers.

The non-market prices charged by non-market producers are therefore deemed not to be suitable for ICP purposes.

Their use would distort international comparisons or real household consumption and welfare when the ratios of market to non-market consumption varies from country to country. In some countries the entire consumption could be non-market, whereas in other it could be entirely market. Their use can also distort comparisons over time when there is a shift from market to non-market production.

Some of the output of a non-market producer may be sold, typically at prices that are well below the market prices of such output. These sales do not increase the total value of the non-market producer, merely the split between the part financed from sales and the part that has to be financed by the government unit or NPI from other sources.

The value of the expenditures incurred by government on non-market output is therefore equal to the total cost of production less any receipts from sales.

It is now widely accepted that the value of the input of capital services into production should be estimated as depreciation plus the interest, or capital, cost incurred on the fixed assets used in production. Capital inputs are therefore systematically under-estimated in the present SNA.

It is likely that in the forthcoming revision of the SNA the estimation of the value of outputs from the costs of their inputs will be changed to include the interest, or capital, costs.

If the cost structure of non-market producers were the same in all countries, the omission of one cost component might not introduce any systematic bias into the relative sizes of the outputs valued at current prices and the volume comparisons derived from using PPPs.

However, if the relative size of the missing capital cost component is much higher in some countries than others because they use a lot more capital goods, both structures and equipment, then a downward bias will be introduced into the relative sizes of the real outputs of those countries.

The output PPPs for non-market producers are estimated from the PPPs for the various inputs. This assumes that the outputs produced by a given set of inputs are the same in different countries: i.e., there are no international differences in the productivity of non-market producers.

The compensation of employees to be reported for the selected occupations is not to be extracted from from government payroll data.

Dividing the total compensation of employees paid to employees in selected occupations by the total number of full time equivalent employees gives an average that is representative of the country, but one that is not comparable between countries.

The reason is that the distribution of employees over the various grades and steps that make up the salary scale differs from country to country.

The compensation reported for each selected occupation should be the annual national average. If the salary scales are adjusted during the course of the year, the modal salary should be adjusted accordingly.

The compensation should also refer to general government. In principle, it should be a weighted average of the compensations payable in the different levels of government. In practice, the averages may be difficult to estimate and the estimates may have to based on central governme only.

This may not be very satisfactory for certain occupations, such as those in education, where the main employers are local government units.